The Dry Bones
by Dogs Bower
Summary: Courage finds an old bone that turns out to be more interesting than what it had seemed to be at first.
1. Chapter 1

**The Dry Bones**

One day Courage the Cowardly Dog was digging in the yard to bury a bone which he had found lying in the road days prior. He finished patting the dirt onto his bone and looked it over with a smile and a satisfied hum. Then he heard Muriel calling for dinner and ran off to their cosy little house in the middle of nowhere.

Muriel set down plates as her crotchety husband Eustace the farmer sat grumbling us usual while holding the Nowhere News paper in front of his face. Courage wagged his tail happily as Muriel set down his dog bowl in front of him full of chicken and mashed potatoes with just a hint of vinegar.

"Here you are Courage. Eat up!" said Muriel.

"Needs salt!" grumbled Eustace. Courage rubbed his paws together as the sound of a chair screeching across the floor came. Courage was ready to dig in but before he could there was a yell from Eustace and Courage looked to see what was the matter.

"Stupid dog! Didn't I tell you not to bring dirty garbage into the house?" yelled Eustace while hopping around on one foot and holding and waving something in the other. "Now get rid of it!" He threw the object at Courage and it hit him in the head causing him to somersault and land with a thump.

"Ow!" muttered Courage as he rubbed his head. He looked down to see the bone he had buried lying at his feet. It still had dirt on it. He picked it up and stared in confusion. "Huh? I could have sword I just buried this." he muttered to himself. But he took the bone and went back outside to bury it again and make it back to his dinner before it got cold. He dug through the loose soil and tossed the bone back into the hole he was sure he had tossed it into before and patted it back down neatly once again. Then he went back into the house.

Courage got back inside and sat back at his bowl, this time taking a bite of food. Eustace had his salt and was seated once more as well as Muriel. There was a whistle of a tea pot and Murial got up this time. "Oh! Tea is done. I'll get it." And she pushed out her chair and walked to the stove. "Oh! Courage, dear. You really shouldn't be leaving your little chew toys out here in the open. Please take this out of the house." said Muriel and turned to Courage as Courage looked at her. He gasped. She was holding the dirty bone. Courage took it as she handed it down to him and he stood there looking at it.

"Okay, this is getting weird. I know I buried this." he said and went back outside with the bone once more. Courage stopped and stared at the ground and the loose soil where he remembered burying the bone. "Maybe I should bury it in a different spot this time." So Courage went to a different spot in the dirt. Once more he dug through the dirt making a hole and then he tossed the bone into it, then covered it back up and patted the soil tightly and neatly again. "There. Hopefully that should do it." Then he went back into the house to his dinner which was getting colder.

This time he got to eat his dinner with no further interruptions.

Later that evening, Courage was sitting in Murial's lap as she was sitting in her rocking chair and Eustace was sitting in his old chair still reading the paper before bed. It was almost 9 o clock pm. "Okay Courage. Time for bed." said Murial as she set Courage down on the floor. Eustace grumbled and got up to go get ready for bed as well. Muriel was brushing her teeth in the bathroom when she gasped and came back out looking annoyed and tapping her foot. "Oh Courage. Now I did tell you to not leave your things in the house didn't I? And this thing is so very dirty. Please take it back out Courage!" she scolded as she held the dirty bone once again.

Courage gulped. He took the bone from her. "Okay, this is definitely getting weird now." Courage went back outside in the dark and this time he tossed the bone into the garbage cans. "That's enough of that!" Then he wiped off his hands and went back inside. Everything was fine and he snuggled into bed with Muriel and Eustace, down at the foot of the bed where he always was. "Good night." he said to himself.

After fifteen minutes Eustace grumbled and got up. "Need a drink of water. Stupid dog." he mumbled as he shuffled off to the door. He fell over something and yelled waking up Muriel and causing Courage to gasp and stare.

Eustace growled and turned to Courage. "You stupid dog! I told you not to leave your dirty garbage in the house! You never listen." He waved his fist in the air.

Courage looked down at the floor and his eyes went wide and he gasped and his fur frizzed out in all directions. There were three dirty bones lying there on the floor. 


	2. Chapter 2

Courage looked in shock at the three bones on the floor. "This isn't normal!" he said to himself with worry knowing something was not right at all here. "The bone came back and now there are more."

Courage gathered up the three dirty bones and tried to leave them outside and not bury them. "Maybe if I don't bury them they won't come back and make more?"

He ran back into the house and tried to go back to bed. He was up half the night expecting Eustace or Muriel to find four bones later. He fell asleep and morning came. He woke up and found the bones had not returned. Yet. Courage was happy. "Yay!" he said as he got up for breakfast.

Breakfast went on as usual and nothing out of the ordinary went on. Eustace was muttering "Stupid dog" at Courage but he went outside to his pickup truck like he normally did every day. Courage was sitting on Muriel's lap enjoying the morning when Eustace suddenly came back in steaming mad.

"Something's wrong with my truck!" he yelled. "Somebody vandalized my truck."

Muriel and Courage got up to look out the door where Eustace was pointing to and saw the truck had turned rusted and the wheels were flat and it looked like it had been buried under a desert for several long years.

"Oh my! What happened to your truck?" asked Muriel to the air just because she was shocked at it too.

"Somebody vandalized my truck!" grumbled Eustace.

"But who could have vandalized your truck way out here in the middle of nowhere?" said Muriel.

Courage looked at the truck that was practically falling apart and he got scared. "What could have happened to the truck?" he wondered to himself. He went up and touched the wheel out of curiosity. The truck suddenly crumbled to dust. He shrieked and ran back to hide under Muriel's dress. Eustace turned and yelled out and grabbed his head in shock.

"My truck!" he yelled in grief.

The afternoon came and Courage was still nervous. Eustace had muttered over his lost truck and now he had to go buy a new one and he loved that old truck so he was angry for hours. He had left to go into town. Courage was wandering around the yard trying to locate the old bones.

"I know I put them right here. Did they move again?" muttered Courage as he looked through the dirt. He looked all over for hours but couldn't find the bones. Then he decided to look where the remains of the truck were in the dirt. "Why do I have the feeling those bones had something to do with the truck?" He dug around in the scrap metal and rusty dirt and found four bones. "I knew it!"

Courage took the bones and held them angrily. "These bones are nothing but trouble! I'm getting rid of them once and for all!" He took the bones into the house and went down to the cellar. He opened up the furnace and threw them into the hot fire. "There, let's see you get back out of there!" he said and brushed off his hands. Then he went back up stairs and back to relaxing with the bones out of his mind and maybe out of the picture once and for all. Hours passed and it became almost evening. The sky was growing dark.

Outside away from the farmhouse on the dirt road used to get to there and from town, the Chinese man in sunglasses was driving along the road while blasting his radio. He saw a figure in the road and had to swerve to avoid it. "Get out of the road ya foo!" he shouted and waved his fist. The figure turned around and stared while wailing mournfully.

"My bones! My bones are so dry. Please give me something to wet them?" the figure asked in its mournful whine.

"You want something to drink? I don't got anything for you. Go into town and get a drink foo!" he said and laughed very annoyingly. The figure kept walking to him but he didn't see it as he laughed harder.

"My bones, my bones are so dry." whispered the shadowy figure. It came right up to the man's car where his arm was out of the window and resting on the car's side and it reached out a wrinkled hand and grabbed it.

"Hey let go!" yelled the man. He saw that the shadowy figure looked like a wrinkled up corpse with very leathery old dry skin. It looked like there was nothing holding up the skin and it was just empty like a sack, without a skeleton. The hair was ratty and thin and there were no eyes in the eye sockets. It wiggled back and forth in the breeze slightly without anything to hold it up in place all the way. The man screamed as his arm turned into the same skin as the corpse figure while it was held tightly.

"My bones, my bones are so dry." wailed the corpse as it turned and left the car with the sunglasses man lying there on the seat looking exactly like it did.

Meanwhile down the road in town Eustace was driving back in his new truck which he had gotten for a cheaper price after haggling for an hour. He was hot so he pulled over to the last gas stop in Nowhere before he went back on the road that stretched back to the farmhouse with miles of nothing in between. He purchased a water bottle and went back to his truck. He got back in and drove off passing a field just as the sky turned black and the light from the sun faded and the stars came out. He saw a figure shuffling along the road side.

"Hey you! Get out of the road!" yelled Eustace. The figure turned to him and stared. "Eh?" he said trying to get a better look at the person standing there all hunched up and wiggling.

"My bones! My bones are so dry. Please give me something to wet them?" asked the corpse figure in the mournful whine.

Eustace looked at the corpse person and then at his bottle of water. "You want some water, eh? I'll give you some. First, what's your offer?" he said and smiled meanly.

"My bones, my bones." muttered the corpse figure. "So dry!" And it reached out its hand to Eustace.

"Bah! Never mind. You don't look like you've got money anyway!" he said and took his hand and the bottle back and then drove away leaving the corpse like figure behind. 


End file.
